The present invention relates to telecommunication field, and more particularly to downloading content objects and or content purchasing via a service provider premises.
During the recent years, electronic commerce and electronic business (EB) conducted over the Internet has not only increased, but has become common place. One popular segment of EB is that related to the purchasing of content from a content server. The purchased content can include a variety of items, such as a document, a record, a video movie, etc. The process of purchasing content through EB is accomplished by surfing a network, such as but not limited to, the Internet. Surfing is performed using a browser application to retrieve information that is embedded within web pages stored in one or more content servers. In general, the surfing process includes identifying or selecting certain content objects, placing an order for one or more content objects and then downloading or receiving the delivery of those objects. Surfing the Internet is typically accomplished via a service provider premises that connects the surfer (a user of the service provider's customer) to the network. An exemplary service provider premises can be an Internet service provider (ISP), a content service provider, a network service provider (a telecom carrier) such as but not limited to cellular service provider, satellite service provider, etc. Henceforth, the description of the present invention may use the term ‘Service Provider Premises’ (SPP) as a representative term for any of the above group of service provider premises as well as other service provider premises not listed. A common content purchasing session or just a common content downloading process can be based on a data communication protocol, such as but not limited to, the Internet Protocol (IP). Usually a content downloading session starts by requesting a web page from which a user can proceed to make selections in accordance with his preference.
For purposes of clarity, a “web page,” is to be considered as a file or document created for use in the World Wide Web environment (hereinafter, “Web”) or similar network. Web pages are typically located using a Uniform Resource Locator (URL), which is a form of address adapted to use in the distributed network environment of the Web. Web pages are typically encoded in Markup Language (ML) such as, but not limited to, the Hyper Text Markup Language, or (HTML), Extensible Markup Language (XML), Wireless Markup Language (WML), XHTML, Handheld Markup Language (HDML), etc. Some of those languages are actually used for displaying content on the displays of cellular telecommunication based devices. A “browser” is a software application at a user device that is adapted to process Web documents. A common Web page includes a plurality of links to other pages or objects. Some of the links are associated with content objects such as, but not limited to, images, sound files (records), video movies, articles, books, etc. Those content objects can be purchased by a surfer.
There are some limitations, problems, vulnerabilities and perceptions in purchasing content objects over the Internet that result in reducing the user's willingness to participate in a purchasing session. One of the limitations is a risk that a failure over the connection may break the downloading process resulting in wasted time and potentially purchasing or receiving corrupted content. Such a failure can be the result of congestion over the connection, priority that is given to other types of communication (real time communication, for example) that shares the same bandwidth, and/or problems in the physical carrier network. As an example, consider the following situation. The user equipment being used to access the content and download the content is a mobile terminal that is connected to the web site containing the desired content, at least partially over a cellular network connection. The downloading process can be interrupted or corrupted simply by a hand off as the mobile terminal moves from one cell to another.
As more and more content becomes available through global networks, it is quite common to encounter content objects that include a considerably large volume of a data. Downloading of such an object may take a long period of time. This is especially true when the download is performed over a low bit rate connection, such as but not limited to, a cellular connection. Unfortunately, increasing the duration of the download process increases the probability that a failure in the connection will occur during the download process.
When there is a break or interruption during the process of downloading a content object, several categories of negative results may occur. For instance, the user may be charged for an incomplete transaction resulting in possessing a useless data file. If the user wishes to retry the download process, then the user may be required to start all over from the beginning; surfing the network looking for the appropriate location of the content; purchasing the content and restarting the download process from the beginning hoping that this time the download will terminate successfully.
There has been a few attempts in the art to provide techniques to address these issues, namely techniques attempting to improve the fidelity of purchasing over a network and offer different methods to over come problems that are due to disconnection during downloading an object. Some of the techniques are depicted in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,923,833 or 6,865,592 and in US publication number: US 20040008688 or US 2005-0125445, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
Some of the above attempts in the prior art to address these needs required a client application to be installed in a user's equipment prior to commencing the transaction. Another technique is used in conjunction with a certain cluster of content servers and is used to protect the certain cluster.
Therefore there is a need for a solution to be used in a service provider premises that can operate to improve the reliability of purchasing content over the Internet. Such a system should be able to handle a plurality of different purchasing sessions occurring simultaneously between a plurality of users with a plurality of different content servers. The operation of the system should be transparent to the surfing equipment (thus no client application is required to be installed prior to the purchasing process) as well as to the content servers.
Furthermore there is a need in the art for a system that can determine when a break in the download process occurs; compensate the payment information that is relevant to the broken process; and actually includes the capability to improve a user's experience in the recovery from an incomplete download. In addition there is a need for a system that will reduce re-surfing the Internet for the required location of the relevant content object.